


Les Abandonées

by Tolpen



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Warcraft - All Media Types
Genre: Almost Everybody Dies, Alternate Universe - World of Warcraft Fusion, Kindness, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Warcraft Lore, Warcraft-ized Names
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 09:38:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14713631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tolpen/pseuds/Tolpen
Summary: The Les Misérables, told as a Warcraft story. Or a story following some characters of the Warcraft universe, whose lives echo and clsoely resemble the events of Les Misérables. Depends on how you want to read it.





	Les Abandonées

**Author's Note:**

> If you are an old reader doing rereading, you might have noticed that I've got... Tired with doing everything Brick-wise. Victor H. was a hell of an author, yeah, but his style ain't something coming to me easily.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The most important character of this story: Charles Frank Myrtle, called Wellcome, the Abbot of Northshire.

In 27 A.D.P, Father Charles Frank Wellcome Myrtle was the Abbot of Northshire. He was an old er man, about eighty years of age, and he had occupied the see of Northshire since the First War.

In spite of this information being not really in any deeper connection to our story, it would be unfair of me, my dear reader, to rob you of all the information and exactness of what I am about to tell you. Whether true or not, the tales told about a man tell you a lot abut them and about the people telling them. How had Father Myrtle come to faith? Nobody could tell. All that was known was that at a very young age he had joined the Explorer's League to the far north of cold frozen wastes of Northrend, and when he came back, he was already a priest.

In year -2, Myrtle was a vicar in Algaz Station, at the time already significantly aged and living in a retired fashion. It had just so happened that an urgent matter of an unknown origin brought him to Stormwind, where at the time the anniversary of the wedding of King Llane and his wife Taria was to be celebrated. Father Myrtle found himself in the antechamber of Bishop Benedictus, as he sought an audience, just when Anduin Lothar was passing by to visit the Bishop in the matters of the upcoming celebration.

As the Lion of Stormwind noticed being observed by the old man, he turned around and asked: “Who is this good man looking at me?”

“Sir,” Father Myrtle answered humbly: “You are looking at a good man who is looking at a great man. Each of us can profit by it.”

That very evening Lothar asked the Bishop the name of the vicar he had met, and not such a long time later Father Myrtle learned he became the Abbot of Northshire.

He moved to Northshire with his sister, Miss Balmlipsina, and her maid Mrs. Magnolie. Miss Balmlipsina was short and sturdy and embodied the very dwarven ideal of respectable with her stern face and braided hair tough as iron and as soft as gravel. Mrs. Magnolie was a pale woman of large proportions in every way, with rough hands but soft words, always short of breath, partly because of all her activity, mainly because of her weak heart and asthma.

Father Myrtle had to undergo the fate of every newcomer – and a dwarf, no less! – to any town anywhere. Stories sprouted like weed on fertile soil after rain. But within a few years, they were gone, as the stout and always so serious man was kind to everyone, always finding words of solace, compassion and praise.

Upon their arrival, they were moved into a grand and luxurious house close to the famous vineyards. Very soon after, without any time to settle in and get accustomed, the Mayor of Goldshire called after them, arranging for a visit.

The Northshire mansion was a great and opulent house built of white stone at the turn of the century by then Northshire Abbot Puget, a well renown theologian who came from Arathi. Everthing in the building held signs of greatness – the Abbot's chambers, the drawing-rooms, the courtyard, the gardens, the dining rooms.

The Goldshire hospital was a low and T-shaped building of a single story with a small herbal garden attached.

Three days after his arrival, the Abbot visited the hospital. The visit ended, and he asked the director of the hospital over to his own house.

“Dear sir,” he said to him, “how many sick people have you at the present moment?”

“Twenty-six, Father.”

“That is the number I counted,” the Abbot nodded, deep in thoughts.

“We lack space to put in more beds, Father,” the director continued. “In fact, the bads we have are crowded on each other.”

“So I have noticed, indeed.”

“The rooms are nothing but halls. The air in them is changed only with great difficulty without calling a mage. When a ray of sunshine appears, the garden is too small for the patients and unsuitable for walk or mere relaxation. In case of an epidemic – this year the pox, two years ago the typhus fever – we haven't got enough beds for the hundreds of sick, we don't know what to do.”

“Those were exactly my thoughts,” Father Myrtle said.

“What would you have, Father?” the director cried out. “What is your advice, what do we do?”

This conversation took place in the gallery dining room in the ground floor of the Northshire mansion. The Abbot stood silent for a long moment and then he abruptly turned to the director of the hospital and asked: “Tell me, good sir, how many beds would fit in this room?”

The director was stuck dumb silent.

“Hmm. I suppose twenty,” the Abbot continues, as thought he was talking to himself. “There had to be a mistake her, sir. There are three of us, living in a house fit for at least sixty, yet your twenty-six patients are cramped in six small rooms. I tell you what, you live in my house and I in yours. I shall give you your house back.”

The following day all twenty-six patients and the director of the hospital moved from Goldshire to the Northshire mansion, while Father Myrtle, Miss Balmlipsina, and Mrs. Magnolie moved to the small house in Goldshire.

Father Myrtle held no property and his family was greatly reduced in the War of the Three Hammers. His sister received five hundred gold pieces a year from the family iron mine in Dun Morogh, and it sufficed her. The Abbot received five thousands gold pieces from the Church and another ten thousands from the abbey vineyards and fields each year. The day the three of them settled in the hospital house, Father Myrtle sat down and wrote the yearly budged in the paper, leaving fifty hundreds for his personal expenses and fifty hundreds for the household – the rest went to the poor and in need, to teachers, nurses, veterans of war, hospitals, orphanages, widows, and others in need.

Mrs. Magnolie hadn't touched the arrangement of the budged out of respect, Miss Balmlipsina considered her brother a living saint, and rightfully so, and wouldn't change a thing he had ever done. Together with the income of Miss Balmlipsina, it all was fifteen hundreds gold pieces a year, and the three of them subsisted on it.

Still, after three years spent in Goldshire and Northshire, the Abbot cried out: “I am still cramped by it all!”

Mrs. Magnolie, a woman who knew a lot of the world, agreed with him and said that back in the old days an abbot would claim another pieces to cover his expenses for carriages, posting, and pastoral visits. The Abbot thought about it, and then wrote a short note to the Cathedral of Holy Light. The Church voted him yearly another three thousand gold pieces for these expenses.

The household, however, got hardly any richer, as of those three thousands a half went to the canteen for the poor, and the other half for mothers and children in need. Such was Father Myrtle's budget.

After a time, offerings of money came in. Those who had and those who lacked knocked on the Abbot's door – the first to give to the later. Within a year the Abbot became the treasurer of all the charity in Elwyn Forest. Yet, it never crossed his mind to add anything to his necessities or change his life in the slightest, far from it.

No matter how much money he received, he never had any. Often it happened that he gifted his coat, shoes, robe or mittens to a poor freezing and wretched when he couldn't find at least a copper for alms. Soon all who had met him said that all was well since he had come. It was a matter of time until people shortened it to Wellcome, and in a short time nobody would had called the Abbot otherwise.

“I like that name,” he said, “Wellcome sounds definitely better than Abbot.”

I do not claim all these stories to be pure truth devoid of mystification, but I tell you, dear reader, that all of these is highly probable and resembles the original the best.

The Abbot didn't omit his pastoral visits because his carriage had turned into alms. The abbacy of Northshire is large and fatiguing. Hills and forests overrun by thieves, cut-throats and bandits, gnolls and murlocks, plains with broken roads and hardly a any shade for a weary traveller. It consists of sixteen vicarships, thirty-seven chapels and countless farms standing alone, and the roads were bad back then, as you have just seen. It was quite a task to see to everything.

Father Wellcome managed that. What was nearby, he visited on foot. Where the road allowed, he used a tilted spring-cart. He rode a mountain ram where a cart wouldn't pass undamaged. The two old women accompanied him. When the trip was too hard for them, he went alone.

One day he arrived in Lakeshire on a cow. His purse at the time homed only moths and didn't allow him for a better mount. The Magistrate Solomon came to receive him on the bridge, and saw him dismount off his cow with scandalized eyes. Some of the townsfolk around were laughing. “Master Magistrate,” said the Abbot, “and good citizens, I realize that I shock you. You think it arrogant for a poor priest to mount such a noble creature close in its looks to the Tauren overseas. I assure you I did so out of necessity, not vanity.

On such trips, he rather talked than preached, and he never went far in search for examples and arguments. He quoted the inhabitants of one region to others. In a region where they were harsh to the poor and homeless, he said: “What people in Redridge. They have conferred on the poor, on widows and orphans, the right to have their meadows mown three days in advance of every one else. They rebuild their houses for them gratuitously when they are ruined. Therefore it is a country which is blessed by the Light.”

In villages that were greedy for possession and profit, he said: “Look at the people of Sentinel Hill! If, at the harvest season, the father of a family has his son away on service in the army, and his daughters at service in the town, and if he is ill and incapacitated, the cure recommends him to the prayers of the congregation; and on Sunday, after the mass, all the inhabitants of the town – men, women, and children – go to the poor man's field and do his harvesting for him, and carry his straw and his grain to his granary.”

And thus he exposed and dismantled the bad and praised the good, never going astray of the point, such was his dwarf nature. With a few phrases he brought and formed the real eloquence of the Light. And because he himself was convinced, he succeeded in his making.

His conversation was cheerful and affable, he never put himself above the two old women with whom he shared the house. He laughed like a schoolboy. Mrs. Magnolie like to call him High Abbot. One day he rose from his armchair and went to the library in search for a book. It was on the most upper shelf and as Father Wellcome was a dwarf, as I have previously hinted and mentioned, he could not reach it. “Mrs. Magnolie, would you be so kind and fetch me a chair? The High Abbot's highness doesn't reach as far as that shelf.”

On occasions he was gifted with a sharp wit which almost always concealed a serious meaning. In the course of one Lent, a young priestess full of vigour came to Northshire and preached in the Abbey. She spoke of charity. She urged the rich to give away their wealth to the poor, lest they face eternal damnation. Mr. Gemborer was present at the sermon and the priestess's words had taken him aback. Now, dear reader you should known that Mr. Gemborer was a wealthy man who traded in jewels and crafts, he had over two million gold pieces to his name. Never in his life he had bestowed alms to any of the poor and wretched. After the delivery of that sermon, it was observed that he gave a copper every Sunday to the old beggar-women at the door of the abbey. There were six of them to share it. One day Father Wellcome caught sight of it, and said to his sister: “There is Mr. Gemborer, buying paradise for a copper piece.”

Born in Dun Morogh, he easily found a common tongue with the miners in Elwyn Forest and Westfall. He talked farm as a shepherd, watched weather like a mountaineer, spoke of the fish like a child. This pleased the people very, as often the clergymen were not so easily approachable for them. He was at home in a barn and in a miner's shack, he could speak of grand things in the lowest of idioms. And because he spoke all tongues, he entered the hearts of all.

Moreover, he considered all men equal, the nobles and the peasants alike. Never had it happened that he would act in rush and without prior considering all circumstances. He said: “When a chariot breaks its wheel on a road, you examine the road for its faults.”

He described himself as an ex-sinner, and did so with a smile. Having no aspirations of austerity, he professed a doctrine of his own which could be summarized as follows: “Fail, sin, falter, if you must and if you will, but always be upright. To be a saint is an exception born of opportunity, to be upright is the rule.”

When men grew angry and unruly, he calmed them, saying that anger and violence is the worst of sin, that it brings barriers among fellow men and conceals the border between attack and defence.

He was kind and feeling to the poor and low, on whom the burden of the society rest. “The crimes of the beggars, of orphans, of wives and of the lawless are the rich, the wars, the husbands and the lawful. Guilty is not the person who sinned for their life, but the one who casts the shadow in which the sin happens.”

A tragedy has happened in Northshire – a man was accused of a murder and the jury found him guilty. The man was of lesser than poor education, but neither he was ignorant. On his final night a priest was requested, as the custom goes. The prison chaplain had fallen ill, and the priest substituting, a young man who had spent all his life in Goldshire, refused, as this was none of his matters. When the Abbot heard it, he said: “And indeed, he was true when he told you so! That is my matter!”

Immediately, he went into the prison and spent the whole night with the man, neglecting food, sleep and drink. He prayed to the Light for the soul of the condemned man. He told him the greatest of truths – the simple ones. Over the night, he brought the man to the Light. The following morning, still in prayers, he went with the man to the gallows. Seeing the man being hung left him in a shock from which he recovered only slowly in course of many years.

Father Myrtle could be summoned at any time any hour of the day to the sick or dying for he understood that there laid his greatest duty and labour. To the widowed an orphaned he went on his own accord, no notice was necessary. He knew how to talk to the, what to say, what silence to hold.

The house of Father Myrtle, as previously said it used to be a hospital, consisted of the ground floor and one story above. There were three rooms on the ground floor, three chambers on the first, and then an attic, unused as it was. A small garden, my dear reader probably remembers it was a herbal garden, belonged to the house, it wasn't even quarter of an acre large. The women had the upper floor for themselves, the Abbot then lived downstairs. The first room, which opened to the street, served as the dining room. Attached to it was Father Myrtle's bedroom, third to follow was a modest oratory. There was no exiting the oratory without passing thorough the bedroom, nor from the bedroom unless you entered the dining room. At the end of the suite in the oratory was a small alcove with a spared bed used in cases of necessity. If a priest from the countryside was travelling thorough Goldshire, this was the bed offered to him.

More than once the good women and their friends raised money for a new altar in the oratory, and always the good Abbot gave the money to the moor, saying: “The greatest altar of all is the unhappy soul of poor shown the mercy of the Light in which it rejoices.”

Miss Balmlipsina had the ambition to décor the house with furniture of silver wood of the Eversong in velvet with a bronze earthroot pattern – the national flower of Ironforge, a complete drawing room set with a sofa in robust dwarfish style. However, such a redecoration would cost five hundreds gold pieces at least, and in the light of the fact she was able to put away only forty-five gold and seven silver pieces over the course of five years, she gave up her dream. Who would benefit from it anyway, certainly not her brother.

There is nothing easier to describe than the Abbot's bedchamber: a small door to the garden, opposite to a narrow bed with plain linen sheets. Next to it was a dresser, and in the shadow of the dresser two bookshelves. Between the bookshelves was the door to the dining room. On the other side was the chimney from the heart and to its left the door to the oratory. Finally on the northern wall was hanging the symbol of the Light beside a glass door leading to the herbal garden.

The only window in the room had a very old curtain of plain cloth. It was old and torn in the edges. It had become so old that Mrs. Magnolia was forced to a drastic action one day, had taken the curtain down and run a large seam thorough it in order to avoid the expense of buying a new curtain. The seam was the shape of a near complete circle and two half circles surrounding it, reminding of the Light's cross. Father Myrtle often looked at it and with a soft smile said: “How delightful!”

All the rooms in the house, both on the ground floor and upstairs, were unpainted hard wood smoothed only so it wouldn't give splinters on mere touch, such was and still is the custom at barracks, prisons, and hospitals.

It must be confessed, and my dear reader should not think any less of the Abbot because of this, that the man still had from his previous possession six pairs of forks, knives and spoons of masterful Ironforge craft, complete with a ladle, which Mrs. Magnolia polished each day and admired their beauty as they gleamed on the rough linen cloth. And since I am now unveiling the reality of the Abbot, I must add that he had often said: “I find it difficult to renounce eating from silver dishes.”

To the silverware two candlestick of massive heavily ornamented silver must be added. Usually they adorned the chimney piece in the Abbot's bedroom, but whenever he had anyone for dinner, Mrs. Magnolia polished them and put the on the table in the dining room.

When not used, the silverware was stored in a small cupboard at the head of the Abbot's bed, locked. I must add, however, that the key was never removed.

The garden held four flowerbeds arranged into crescents, and along the garden ran a low wall of white stone. In two of the flowerbeds Mrs. Magnolia planted vegetable, the third held many herbs left behind as a heritage of the hospital, and the last bed in the centre was the Abbot's where he tended to some flowers. Mrs. Magnolia had said: “High abbot, you who turn everything to account yet you have one useless flowerbed. Wouldn't it be better to plant squash and pumpkin there instead of petunias and violets?” And to which Father Myrtle answered: “Dear Mrs. Magnolia, beautiful is as useful as useful. Maybe even more so,” he added after a while of thoughts.

Father Wellcome wasn't as hostile to insects as other gardeners and farmers would have been. He loved to spend time trimming and hoeing and cultivating the flowers, he talked to them on occasion, he delighted in their gentle beauty. He did not study plants, he loved flowers. He had learned to love his fellow men; he respected the learned men, he respected the ignorant the same. And without failing either, he watered his flowers every summer evening with a tin can painted blue and yellow.

The house had not a single door that could be locked. The front door in the dining room, as previously said, opened to the street. They had had locks and bolts on them as thought it was a door to a prison and not a hospital. Father Wellcome had all this ironwork removed and melted into tools for the farmers, thus the door was never fastened by anything but the latch. At first it gave both the women fright. “Have locks on your door if you want,” the Abbot had said. Eventually they shared his confidence, or at least pretending they did.

As for the Father himself, he went by the holy book which said: “The door of a physician should never be shut, the door of a priest should always be open.” Next to the line he wrote in his hand, such was his habit to mark down his thoughts on books, the following words: “Ask not a man for his name if he seeks shelter. The one embarrassed by his own name is the one who needs the most sheltering.”

Often he was asked, both by the Goldshire guard and Miss Balmlipsina whether they shouldn't at least guard the door, to which he answered: “This house is guarded by the Light. And if it is not, then all guards and sleepless nights would be in vain.” Then he would change the topic.

He was fond of saying: “There is a bravery of the priest as well as the bravery of a colonel of dragoons, – only,” he added, “ours must be tranquil.”

To complete the reader's image of the Abbot of Northshire, one more story must be told, as it is one of the greatest descriptions of that man.

The great city of Stormwind was destroyed by the Horde at the end of the Second War. The great engineer Edwin VanCleef, at the time leader of the Stonemasons Guild, and his men rebuild the city from ruins. The House of Nobles, however, refused to pay the full price the Stonemasons valued their work for, instead they offered only a symbolic compensation. When Edwin VanCleef demanded the rest of the payment, the two sides could not come to an agreement, mainly because of the doings of nefarious Lady Prestor. The House of Nobles disbanded the Stonemasons Guild which resulted in violent riots within the newly constructed city walls. VanCleef and his men were forced to flee the city after Queen Tiffin was murdered in the chaos, knowing the vengeance of the King would not cease now.

Edwin VanCleef took the Moonbrook village, and formed his men into a new organization of the infamous Defias Brotherhood. These criminals would raid the country of Westfall for many years, scaring the farmers, kidnapping miners, and plotting against the kingdom, taking the gold mines and denying Stormwind resources. The military was sent after his track, but he had always escaped them. In this chaos and terror, Father Myrtle arrived to Sentinel Hill, travelling to the southern lighthouse. The sergeant of the local guard came to meet him and urged him to turn back, for VanCleef controlled the land from the Dagger Hills to Saldean's farm with the only exception of Sentinel Hill. There was danger even with an escort, it would only expose three or four unfortunate guardsmen to the knives of the criminals and for no purpose.

“Therefore,” the Abbot said, “I mean to go without any escort.”

“Father Well- Myrtle! You cannot be serious!”

“I mean my words so thoroughly that I refuse any guardsmen with me, and I shall set out in an hour.”

“Set out?”

“In an hour.”

“Alone?”

“All by myself.”

“High Abbot, you will not do such a thing!”

“There is a man at the lighthouse,” Father Myrtle said, “whom I haven't seen for ten years now. He is a good friend of mine, he cares after the light. He is a ghost of a captain whose ship sunk at this very coast. He has been at the lighthouse ever since. He has witnessed two raids of murlocs on a poor family in the lighthouse, a family which sadly lives no more. He needs to be told of the kind Light every now and then. What would he say to an abbot who was afraid?”

“But the brigands, good Father?”

“Yes, now when I am thinking about it,” the Abbot said, “They surely need to be told of the Light too. I am certain they haven't been at a proper mass in a while.

“Sir, there is a band of them! A flock of buzzards!”

“My good sergeant, maybe it is this flock the Light wants be to guide thorough the dark. Who knows the ineffable ways of Providence?”

“They will rob you!”

“I have nothing.”

“Then they will kill you!”

“A poor old dwarf priest, such as I am, passing his way in prayers? Bah. What for?”

“But sir. Sir, what if you do meet them?”

“Well,” Father Myrtle pondered it for a moment and then said with a bright smile: “I will ask them alms for the poor, of course.”

“In the name of all that is holy, do not go. You are risking your life, Father.”

“I am not a man to protect his life, Sergeant, I am to guard souls of others.”

They let hem do as he pleased, he set out soon after with only a child who offered to serve as a guide. Still, it was a cause of great concern.

He would take neither his sister nor Mrs. Magnolia with him, he travelled alone on ram's back across the dry and harsh windy plane of overgrown grass and ruined crops, and arrived safe and sound to the lighthouse where he met with his friend. He remained there for a week, preaching, talking. A few of the honest people who still lived around came to visit, he talked to them, taught them, listened to them. When the time of his departure came, he decided to chant Praising Of The Light in all holy glory. Yet, the lighthouse nor any of the settlements on the shore could not provide more than one ancient chasuble of tattered mageweave adorned with imitation of lace.

“Eh, so what,” said the Abbot. “Let us announce our Praising Of The Light as it is now. Things will sort themselves out.”

While everyone was busy with the preparations, a large chest was deposited in front of the lighthouse for the Abbot by two unknown sailors, who departed on the instant. The chest was opened; it contained a cope of cloth of gold, a mitre ornamented with diamonds, the Archbishop's cross, a magnificent crosier – all the vestments which had been stolen only a month ago from the treasury of the Cathedral of Light in Stormwind. In the chest was a piece of hard paper on which the following words were written: “From VanCleef to Father Wellcome.”

“Well, haven't I said things will sort themselves out?” Father Wellcome said with a smile. Then he added: “This is a blessing from the Light.”

A young priestess visiting the lighthouse said: “Maybe from the Light, or perhaps from the devil.”

To which the Abbot answered with authority: “The Light.”

When he returned to Sentinel Hill, curious people gave him stares along the road. At a priest's house he reunited with his sister and Mrs. Magnolia and told them: “I left bearing only my faith in the Light, and I return with the treasure of the Cathedral.”

And in the evening when he went to bed, he said: “Let us not fear robbers and thieves, those dangers are petty and come from the necessity of the life. The real robbers are our own prejudices in which shadow true murderers hide. What matters a threat to our purse; we should attend to what threatens our very soul.”

However, such incidents were very unique and rare in the Abbot's life. Majority of his years he spent doing the same things at the same time – one hour of his day reminded of one month of his year.

What happened to the treasure is not particularly clear, and I apologize to fail your curiosity here, dear reader. Perhaps it will be soothed somewhat when I tell you that among the Abbot's papers was found one saying: “The only question is whether to turn it to the Cathedral or to a hospital.” I myself have visited the Cathedral as of recently, and I can assure you that the Archbishop's cross is still absent on the altar.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While yes, this is going to copy the original brick, I have no intents to re-write everything, so I am cutting out those boring and unimportant parts like the whole chasing and revolution. I am kidding. The chapters are just going to be much shorter than in the brick, alright?  
> In one tab I have opened an online version of the original Les Mis, in another Wowpedia, in third a translator.  
> The Warcraft-ized names are more of an experiment. Let me know how it comes to you, in case of necessity I can always change them later.

**Author's Note:**

> Feed me comments. Please. Feed me comments, dear reader, for I am famished nearly to grave.


End file.
